


Casual as Birds

by apple_pi



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 22:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple_pi/pseuds/apple_pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale and Crowley in London, 1944.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Casual as Birds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vulgarweed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/gifts).



The polite fiction that demons could not enter churches was one which Crowley allowed, most of the time. After all, there was plenty of tempting to be done outside those walls - Crowley had always felt rather pleased with the moneylenders, back in the Old Country - so why should Crowley deal with the itchy feeling certain holy places created?

Today, however, he would make an exception. The demon hunched his shoulders and ducked into the building, ignoring the ticket-takers and ignored by them in his turn. The pews were full, shifting restless mass of people, the smells of wet wool and humanity strong even beneath the high ceilings. The choir stood on wooden risers just in front of the altar, but their voices acquiesced to no such confinement, arching over the heads of the almost-silent audience to greet Crowley where he stood frozen, back to the cold stone wall, hands clenched in the pockets of the black greatcoat he wore, hat jammed rudely down upon his head.

Between songs the demon shifted, stepped forward, scanned the heads that faced away from him, toward the women and boys of the chorus, the director moving like a puppetmaster before them. And there it was: a fair head, mussed hair, curve of cheek, narrow shoulders in a worn tweed coat. The music began again before Crowley could call, and so he slouched back against the wall once more, to wait.

"Angel," he said loudly at the interval, and Aziraphale turned from where he had been chatting amiably with his neighbor, a tired-face older woman who nevertheless had a luminous smile. Crowley looked away from it at Aziraphale, whose luminosity was muted, here where it should be brightest, on the night when it should be most vivid.

"Crowley," Aziraphale said, and smiled at the woman, touching her arm before he moved away, begging pardons and excusing himself as he edged past knees to the end of the row. "What are you doing here?" He frowned; it was an odd expression upon his cherubic face.

Crowley flipped a hand and pinched the fabric of Aziraphale's (rubbishy) jacket between his fingers, carefully not touching his skin. "Come along," he said, pulling him through the milling throngs toward the heavy doors at the back of the church. "I need advice."

Aziraphale allowed himself to be pulled, though he cast a sad look over his shoulder toward the altar. "You know that he only composed it last year," he said, but once outside he wrapped his scarf about his throat and followed Crowley down the narrow street, turning with him into an alley. The only light came from the moon, windows everywhere dark in accordance with the black-out, although it had been nearly a year since the last bombing runs. The moon, though, was enough - pale on Aziraphale's hair, a wash of light which left his face as clear as daylight might have.

"How are you, my dear?" Aziraphale asked, stopping when Crowley stopped. "It seems like an age since you left."

"Flying isn't what it used to be," Crowley said dryly, lifting a hand to tip his hat back from his forehead. The hand, he noticed distantly, was shaking. A quick glare put an end to that, and Crowley stuffed the betraying limb back into his pocket, examining Aziraphale with masked care. "How have things been here?"

Aziraphale sighed, and smiled, and sighed. "They're staggering along," he said. His face was thinner than the last time Crowley had seen him. "The people - they puzzle me, do you know? Courageous, so many of them, and they do have a certain something - they do persevere. And sometimes." A headshake. "Sometimes they are avaricious and cruel and they take advantage of a wretched situation. It's enough to make me wish I hadn't given away my flaming sword." A shadow crossed his face, and Crowley looked away, fingernails digging into his palms. "But you said you needed advice, and here I'm babbling."

"I needed - something." Crowley scowled at the ground.

There was silence between them for a long moment.

"Not advice at all," Aziraphale said softly, and Crowley didn't move, didn't speak; only kept his eyes on the frozen mud beneath their feet, skim of ice over puddles, his own booted feet and the angel's, peeping from beneath his trousers.

"Come along, then," Aziraphale said, and turned away, not looking back to see whether Crowley would follow.

The bookshop was near, paper snowflakes stuck to the tight-closed black-out drapes; the thin, weary chime of the bell as Aziraphale pushed the door open struck Crowley, somehow, to the core.

"Do you think demons have hearts?" Crowley asked, cold in his heavy coat, hands stuffed under his arms. The shop was dim, dust beneath his feet, along the shelves: only Aziraphale clean, turning to face Crowley, shrugging his jacket from his shoulders, hands bright against the dark tweed.

Aziraphale hung his coat and reached for Crowley's. "Of course they do," he said, still in that too-soft voice. "Would you like some tea?"

"They have ovens," Crowley said abruptly. "They - there are children, you know, and they put the children in with their mothers, into the ovens. They're already dead - they don't burn them alive. Very small, very thin. Their hair all shorn, clothing taken away. Then men - the men are working. They don't all get to be burnt." His voice sounded wrong to him, halting, foreign. He wondered what language he’d spoken, which tongue he’d used.

Aziraphale came closer, face a blur. "My dear," he said. His hand came up, too quickly, and Crowley shied from it and then stilled. Aziraphale didn't slap him; cupped his cheek instead, and looked into his eyes, though Crowley knew it couldn't be easy to do so. "You need to rest."

They had never touched one another before – never touched skin before.

There were stops and starts, flickers of motion:

A teacup hot in his palms. “They’ve gone so far beyond what we could have conceived,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale's eyes across from him were blue as the winter sky could be, blue as shadows on snow.

The stairs beneath his feet as he climbed. “They work, you know – the men work, and some of the women. They’re thin. They have thin clothes, and it’s very cold there.” Crowley’s voice was thin and cold, too; the angel’s hand beneath his elbow was warm, though, and Crowley shivered to feel it through the heavy layers of cloth that bound him.

A small, box-like room and Aziraphale checking the curtains, pulling them tight. “They have to stand in the cold, in the wind, in wooden shoes.” Crowley stood still, still as stone but for his mouth, which would not stop moving.

"You can stay here," Aziraphale said, and he undressed Crowley, peeling away layers of clothing like flesh, until Crowley was shivering, naked, arms wrapped around his too-frail parody of a body.

"Lie down," Aziraphale said, and lay blankets over him, around him. Crowley closed his eyes, and a moment later Aziraphale's weight settled beside him, pinning him beneath the coverlet, one hand in his hair. "Perhaps sleep would be a help," the angel suggested, and Crowley sighed and fell headlong into it, warming, determined not to dream.

 

~*~

NOTES:

1\. The title comes from the third movement of a Benjamin Britten choral piece (words by W.H. Auden), "Hymn to Saint Cecilia": _O dear white children, casual as birds / Playing among the ruined languages..._

2\. The music Aziraphale was listening to was another Britten choral work (and the place this snippet began): “Ceremony of Carols,” composed in 1942 while Britten and his partner, tenor Peter Pears, traveled from the U.S. toward their home in the United Kingdom. By the time Crowley heard it, the Blitz, which had flattened more than a million homes in the UK, was mostly past, but the Holocaust had time yet to run its course.


End file.
